


From Me Far Off

by Crowgirl



Series: On the Strength of the Evidence [37]
Category: Grantchester (TV)
Genre: Awkward Conversations, Awkward Romance, Gen, Internalized Homophobia, Past Relationship(s), Pre-Relationship, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-18
Updated: 2017-06-18
Packaged: 2018-11-15 15:21:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,888
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11233764
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Crowgirl/pseuds/Crowgirl
Summary: ‘No, I’m not going home between terms or -- or any other time, I think.’





	From Me Far Off

It takes until late spring for Leonard to trip up. By then, tea with Ben has become a weekly ritual, skipped only once when Leonard comes down with his yearly bout of bronchitis in March. 

‘So are you going home for a rest before summer term?’ He doesn’t realise for a minute until Ben tilts his head slightly, his hand suspended over his tea cup and then the words come back to him and he gasps. ‘Oh! My -- God! Ben! I’m so--’ Without thinking about it, he reaches out to cover Ben’s hand on the table with his own. Ben starts at the touch, color flooding into his face. 

‘I’m -- I’m so sorry, I didn’t -- I don’t know what I was thinking, I -- _wasn’t_ thinking, clearly, I--’ Leonard knows he’s babbling now, completely over-compensating for a slip he could have at least _tried_ to pass off if he had taken a minute to _think_. 

‘Leonard. It’s all right.’ Ben presses Leonard’s hand between his, then lets Leonard pull it back. ‘You’ve been so carefully _not_ asking.’

‘Yes, well, I--’

‘And the answer is no,’ Ben interrupts, his voice even. ‘No, I’m not going home between terms or -- or any other time, I think.’ He lifts his cup and takes a sip and Leonard recognizes the firm grip of someone determined _not_ to let his hand shake. ‘I’m not so much of a fool as to want to know what my father would have to say now he’s had a chance to think about it. And he made his feelings pretty clear last time he saw me.’ He adjusts his collar self-consciously and Leonard’s throat constricts at the memory of the bruises. 

‘What -- what about your mother?’ His own mother is the only member of Leonard’s immediate family left at this point. His mother’s parents, the sole set of grandparents he knew, are both dead, only ever having known him as a little boy who learned to read too early. There are aunts and uncles and his mother’s friend Mildred, of course, but he’s never had a very _confiding_ relationship with any of them. Mildred writes him regularly and never forgets to mention the marital status of any woman she has met recently.

Ben’s mouth tightens slightly. ‘She had her chance.’ He lifts the cup again but this time the self-control breaks and the cup wobbles. When he puts it back down, it rattles sharply against the saucer and Ben sighs, covering his eyes with his hand for a moment. ‘Sorry, I’m -- sorry. You’re -- it’s the first time I’ve said it aloud. That’s all.’ He drops his hand and looks at Leonard. ‘I -- sort of knew it was going to happen. You know? Some day. Some time. I just -- didn’t picture it being _now.’_ He tries for a smile but the corners of his mouth quirk down almost immediately and Leonard sees him swallow, quickly and hard.

 _My cue._ Leonard clears his throat and starts chatting -- anything, everything he can think of, nothing that needs an answer -- rattling his cup and saucer together, counting out change onto the tablecloth, reaching around the chair into his coat pocket to fumble for a note when he doesn’t have enough coins, standing up to talk to the waitress and give Ben a chance to pull himself together enough to get out of the shop. 

* * *

Neither of them speak until they get to the last turning before the college where their paths normally divide: Ben going on down the street towards his rooms, Leonard turning left towards the train station. 

They pause at the corner and Leonard clears his throat. Before he can say anything, though, Ben speaks quickly: ‘Would you mind walking a little further? Just today. It’s such nice weather.’ 

Leonard glances up at the sky and then at his watch. He’s on the verge of missing the 4.50 as it is. ‘Not at all. Lead on.’

* * *

Leonard lets Ben take the lead; it isn’t exactly what he would call ‘a little further’ -- they walk for about fifteen minutes until Ben touches his shoulder and guides him down an alleyway between a high brick wall and a house. It looks distinctly unhopeful until it opens out into a narrow patch of garden. 

There’s a strip of lawn a few meters wide between a flower border and six half-grown chestnut trees against another brick wall. 

‘Oh, it’s lovely.’ Leonard stops in the alleyway entrance. ‘What is it?’

‘Just a bit of scrub ground that belongs to one of the colleges. Some students took it over a few years ago and made it over.’ Ben gestures at the house behind the chestnuts. ‘Two of them live there now; they keep it on rather than see it turn into a tip.’

‘And they let people in to use it?’

‘Well.’ Ben smiles. ‘Not everyone, no.’ 

‘Are we trespassing?’ Leonard follows Ben across the grass towards a neat wooden bench set between two trees.

Ben laughs this time which Leonard counts as a definite improvement. He had been spinning out dire stories where this was the last pleasant afternoon they would share; a laugh is a good sign that it won’t be. 

‘No. I work for one of the dons who got them permission to make the garden in the first place.’

It takes Leonard a minute, until he gets seated, before the word strikes him. ‘You work for him?’

Ben glances sideways at him. ‘Yes.’

‘But --’

‘Well, it’s either pick up odd jobs or--’ Ben shrugs and smiles. ‘I’ve got quite the reuptation as the helpful young man with manuscript preparation and straightening out notebooks and cleaning up studies and -- oh, all sorts of things.’

‘I -- I thought you had a scholarship.’

‘I do. But it doesn’t cover everything. And I do owe Sidney.’

‘Oh -- oh, I’m sure he--’ Leonard stops himself. He’s certain Sidney doesn’t expect to be repaid but that’s between him and Ben.

‘I know. He’s said he doesn’t want it back.’ Ben shrugs and gives Leonard a shy sideways smile. ‘But I want to repay it and since I’ll be the one giving him the money, I think I win.’

Leonard laughs, thinking of the last time _he_ had tried to pay Sidney back for something. Sidney had dodged the conversation for a week and, when Leonard finally gave up and left the money tucked under Sidney’s typewriter, he came home the next day to find a new volume of Aquinas sitting on his own desk. ‘You might have to put more effort into it than you expect.’

Ben shrugs, still smiling, and turns to look out over the neat grass. ‘I’m willing to give it some stick if I have to.’ 

‘I know he was -- we both were -- happy to be able to help you,’ Leonard says, a little more awkwardly. He and Sidney really hadn’t talked about the arrangement that had Ben sleeping in the third floor spare room for nearly a month. Thinking back on it, he suspects it had simply seemed so obvious to them both that no discussion had been necessary. They’ve fallen into the same rhythm of wordless agreement during other emergencies -- most recently Geordie’s sudden hospitalization -- since then and he’s chosen to take it as confirmation that they work well together. 

‘And I was happy to be helped,’ Ben says and then laughs. ‘Although that sounds like the most ungrateful thing to say -- I was, Leonard, truly. I -- don’t know what I’d’ve done otherwise.’

 _‘Sounding_ grateful is not required,’ Leonard says and lets himself lean back against the brick wall, admiring the color of the early tulips along the other edge of the lawn. They’re just at the point of bloom, before the petals have begun to separate and the color, a bright, clear pink, is as silky perfect as it’s going to be. 

Ben is silent for a few minutes, then shakes his head, looking down at his hands, clasped between his knees. ‘Although what you must have thought of me…’ He glances at Leonard, his eyes sliding away so fast Leonard has no time to read his expression.

‘Thought of you,’ Leonard repeats. Foolishly enough, all he can think of is the first week’s laundry where Mrs Maguire had been almost equally appalled by the state of Ben’s shirts and Ben’s fumbling -- and firmly rebuffed -- attempts to take the work off her hands. 

Ben lifts one shoulder and lets it drop. ‘I wasn’t exactly being…’ He sighs and pinches at the bridge of his nose and speaks without moving his hand: ‘I was behaving like an idiot. You must have thought I was one. I always thought it was very -- kind in Sidney. Not to tell me what he thought of me.’

Leonard sits forward, jarred enough that he puts a hand on Ben’s arm without thinking. ‘Ben -- no. No-one -- _neither_ of us--’ He’s wise enough not to speak for Mrs M -- whom he knows judges firmly and finally, but is at least thoughtful enough to keep her judgments to herself. ‘--thought that of you. You -- you made a mistake. That’s all.’

‘I didn’t,’ Ben says, turning to look at Leonard. His dark eyes are sober and Leonard feels the breath catch in his throat. Ben’s silent for a long moment; his lips move once or twice as if he’s contemplating what to say next, then he draws a deep breath and licks his lower lip. 

‘Dominic wasn’t a mistake.’

Leonard feels himself freeze, caught in a moment where he has absolutely no idea what to say next. All he can think of is the morning standing outside of Ben’s burning house and the poetry quotation they passed between them. Ben’s brief smile. 

Leonard takes a deep breath. ‘I didn’t mean that.’ He takes his hand off Ben’s arm and sits up, folding his hands in his lap, suddenly aware of himself in black clericals with the white collar at his throat. He almost reaches up to finger it but stops himself, keeping his eyes on a tulip in the border that’s very slightly shorter than the others. 

‘Aren’t you supposed to?’ Ben doesn’t stop looking at him and his voice is flat.

Leonard shrugs, keeping his own eyes fixed on the tulip although his vision is starting to go fuzzy, turning the flower into a pink blur. ‘You’d have to ask the bishop.’ He draws in a long breath and says, ‘What I meant was that a man -- so much -- older -- than yourself.’ 

_And married, with children, terrified of being found out, unwilling to protect you,_ Leonard thinks but doesn’t say. He has one of those himself in his brief back catalog; he wonders if any man like them doesn’t. It's a very modest ambition but he's always promised himself he will never be _that_ man. Out of his peripheral vision, he sees Ben nod.

‘Yes. _That_ was a mistake.’ Ben is silent for a long minute, then pushes himself to his feet and turns, looking down at Leonard. ‘But at least I don’t have to wait until I’m as old as he is and maybe painted myself into the same corner he had to -- to understand myself.’ He holds out a hand and Leonard takes it, letting their palms press together for a brief moment. ‘Shall we go?’ 

**Author's Note:**

> This was actually going to be Ben and Leonard's first kiss. I wrote the first two pages of it and forgot about the whole thing so completely that I only just remembered it -- about two years after I started it, according to Google Docs!
> 
> The title is from [Sonnet LXI](http://www.bartleby.com/70/50061.html), the full line being "For thee watch I whilst thou dost wake elsewhere, / From me far off, with others all too near."
> 
> As always, thanks to the best of beta readers: [the lady Kivrin](http://archiveofourown.org/users/kivrin) and [Elizajane](http://archiveofourown.org/users/elizajane) for beta'ing.


End file.
